List sports you participated in.

Lifeguard at Rockwell park; basketball and football, BHS; basketball and football Dean College; football at Boston College; player/coach of Hartford Blues football, player for Providence Steam Rollers.

List All-League teams you were a member of.

All-East end and honorable mention All-American at Boston College in football.

TELL US MORE:

Inducted into the Boston College Hall of Fame posthumously in 1971. His Hall of Fame citation read: Grattan O’ Connell was the greatest down-the-field man in BC football. The Connecticut youth, iron man, started every game in four years and blocked more punts and recovered more balls than anyone else whoever wore the spangles of the Maroon and Gold.

He later was a popular sports writer and cartoonist for the Hartford Courant while also doing a weekly sports cartoon for the Bristol Press.

Chuck McCarthy, the famed and late sports editor of the Bristol Press, a friend of his, called him ‘a man’s man’ after O’Connell died, in his Mar. 21, 1942 ‘Sports Circles’ column dedicated to O’Connell.

O’Connell was also a football official and was well-known and respected throughout the East as a football coach of the Hartford Blues. He played for the Blues and the Providence Steamrollers, two of the top teams in the country in pre-NFL days. Although just 39 years old, Grattan had made a name for himself. Had he lived a full life, he would have added more honors and awards to his resume.

Doctors believe his premature death was caused by his football play in college. He was always getting banged up in playing all the time and both ways, on offense and defense. He had back trouble to start out with and 10 years later died of chronic nephritis with uremia and attributing was diabetes mellitus. Uremia is an abnormal accumulation of urea and other metabolic waste products in the bloodstream. Nephritis is the inflammation of one or both kidneys. Chronic means the problems eventually destroy the kidneys. That’s a condition of kidney failure.

He suffered with pain for many years, however, never complained. As Chuck McCarthy had said, he was ‘a man’s man’.